In today's era of Occupy Wall Streeters and Tea Partiers, it may be hard to convince some rightfully indignant Americans to "like" either candidate in this fall's election. Perpetually bright promises in recent decades, along with perpetually disappointing results, have led some Americans to question whether they should even vote at all.
But the fundamental mechanism of change in a free and democratic society is the right to vote for our elected officials. If people want change, they cannot merely bellyache and bemoan their fate. They must take action and vote for somebody.
The Census Bureau reported in 2008 that 131 million Americans turned out to vote in that year's presidential election. That may sound like a lot of people, but consider that the nation had about 304 million citizens, according to that year's figures. About 80 million of those citizens were not of voting age, so that leaves us about 220 million voting-age Americans.
In other words, about 60 percent of Americans who could vote in 2008 did vote. That may not seem bad, but consider that in other developed nations, like Sweden, voter turnout is close to 80 percent of eligible voters.
That's where the Internet should come in.
In my opinion, the key to breaking Americans' apathy is engagement. Recent efforts like the campaign to stop SOPA showed that Facebook can transform from a simple social networking tool to a platform for political action.
We live in a digital era, but our voting is still in the virtual Stone Age. Most of us have to drive during designated hours to a polling location. Many who don't vote miss out because they are working long shifts or face a long commute.
That's why I think voters need to be given the opportunity to cast their ballots on a secure, online platform. Here's where I propose something that may be controversial. I'd like to see the government partner with Facebook and allow voting via a secure Facebook app.
The state of Washington recently initiated a project that lets citizens register to vote via Facebook. Nine other states support some form of online voter registration, which is just a step away from voting, and I feel that online voting is a logical next step.
And as Washington State decided, Facebook is the perfect fit for connecting voters, given its ubiquity in the US. The government regularly contracts thousands of major technology firms to handle vital infrastructure. And when it comes to voting, you could not find a much more ideal platform than Facebook.
Each year, about 15 percent more Americans "plug in" to Facebook, and last year, the percentage of Americans enrolled on the platform was around 51 percent. In other words, there are probably as many American adults on Facebook as there are American adults who vote. What's more, 78 million adults regularly use Facebook on a mobile device.
Facebook has a number of advantages. First, it's preexisting. The government could direct users to a voting app with far less expense and overhead than other kinds of advertisements. Second, it's relatively secure. Users must list their real names and are only allowed one account. Account verification and security are both addressed vigorously.
It's tempting to think that Facebook voting could lead to more voter fraud, but that wouldn't necessarily be the case. There's plenty of voter fraud problems in the real world, too, so why should we jump to the conclusion that digital voting would be worse? It might in fact be less prone to fraud.
America needs to be a world leader in technology and allow voters to cast their ballots online. Doing so not only will increase participation, but also will allow Americans to connect with one another to discuss candidates and issues. And Facebook is the perfect fit for a secure, largely pre-built platform on which to place such an historic effort.
Turnout has been rising steadily for the past twenty years, and there's no apparent acceleration (or deceleration) related to online activity.
Kim, we cant really compare the past 20 years on internet with voting performance. Its the social media that is contributing to politics. Before it, the internet wasnt really doing great contributions for the politics as there was no famous forum for discussing politics.
I would argue that building community is done well with social media tools.
Running a secure online election may even be possible someday.
I don't think the nation is ready to undertake this for a major national election, and I don't see how we can overcome the obstacles in our way policy wise.
There is already a major debate over how to properly identify voters, and resisitance to having a simple photo id to be able to vote at a polling place despite the obvious advantages to having something like that.
One citizen, one vote would be a great online app, but what about the people who don't have access to a secure online connection?
Waqas, good thoughts, but the evidence is that the growth of interest in elections predates wide use of the Internet. Turnout has been rising steadily for the past twenty years, and there's no apparent acceleration (or deceleration) related to online activity.
Yah. Complaining wont help and to drive a change, contribution is necessary i.e. through vote ! Corrupt politicians who keep on winning want the nation to remain in slumber and by focusing only on our own personal needs, we can enhance their evil power. Its just that media should support new candidates from new parties as well so that people dont find it waste of time if they find that a deserving candidate will never win.
The role of media in building thoughts of elections in the public's mind has been great and that is what causes people to take elections seriously. Through media, the public learns more about the candidates which helps them form an opinion about them therefore raising the excitement to support their preferred candidates in elections. The role of internet, through online voting, can be enormous as well and % growth shall increase due to it.
Kim - I hear you, I hear you. We also need to remember the other elections that are smaller but just as important - local and state. But yes, the Presidential election has drawn more votes and let's hope this is a continuing trend.
Clearly the political machine has (for years) needed some adjustment in performance to even remotely resemble expectation of the voter.
And yes, with Walmart I've heard people doing this not just for large ticket items (which MAY make such camping out advantageous) but for things like toasters and such -- so I think an adjustment is needed on both sides of the voting lever.
Also, as a friend of mine pointed out - "Some people just like to complain, whether they vote or not. Take away that "right to kvetch" from people will lead to revolution" I think she may be spot on with this.
No doubts about the unworthy attitude towards the election. Actually, the customers at Walmart know that they'l get a benefit from the offering while people are unsure as to their vote being of any use and benefit to them. Once, the politicians make that trust existent, the voters wont mind standing 12 hours in the lines before the voting begins.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Civil libertarians are outraged at the revelation the NSA is reportedly spying on more than one-third of Americans -- obtaining phone records from phone companies, in case it might need them for later use. Edward Snowden, the man who leaked details of that program, also revealed a second effort dubbed “Prism,” which represented a more aggressive grab of email and other communications. (See: Prism Exposes Unwritten Privacy Rules.)
While outsourcing can initially appear to deliver massive cost savings, some firms are starting to wake up to its hidden costs -- shipping, production latency, and quality control. But perhaps the biggest hidden cost of outsourcing is intellectual property (IP) theft.
The version of Windows 8.1 that Microsoft previewed this week is a step in the right direction, but it shows that Microsoft is still missing the boat in some ways.
Whether you’re an engineering firm that uses CAD for parts design, or an e-business that leverages Photoshop for user-interface graphics, you likely require a modest graphics-processing unit. In the old days, this was a daunting hurdle to innovation, but today, the situation has improved thanks to technologies like NVIDIA’s GRID and Microsoft’s RemoteFX. Such virtualized graphics protocols allow you to load-balance graphics-intensive workloads from virtual desktops on a server-side graphics card.
Take a trip down memory lane and imagine, if you will, a system-on-a-chip with Apple IIe-like specs -- 4KB of RAM and 32KB of flash. Add some modern niceties like an ARM Cortex-M0+ 32-bit pipeline, 12-bit DAC, and low-power UART, and you have Freescale's recently unveiled Kinetis KL02, which the company calls "the world's smallest ARM Powered MCU."
Twitter's changes are clearly aimed at being more Facebook-like, and this is because both companies are vying to serve the mobile social network market. But can that market work for anybody, given how difficult it is to push ads to social-update readers?
President Obama may soon earn the badge as "Mayor" of the White House, thanks to his joining the mobile check-in service, FourSquare. Let's all sigh in unison, shall we?
The city of San Francisco is on the leading edge of using the Internet to provide government transparency. It is providing WiFi for its have-nots, and its DataSF.org initiative is putting the city's valuable data back in the hands of its citizens, with innovative results.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
Internet Evolution's Alison Diana describes how her daughter and friends are using social media to stay connected with a girl in their social group who's battling leukemia.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Email This
